Home - Vijee Venkatraman

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Elements of Marie Curie

When pressed to write a memoir, Marie Curie—two-time Nobel Prize winner and the only person to win for two different fields of science— said that her life could be summed up in three sentences: “I was born in Warsaw of a family of teachers. I married Pierre Curie...

I am a graduate of the Science Journalism program at Boston University.

I chase stories on all topics of interest. I go where the reporting takes me. This website is a digital portfolio of my articles and essays. I also translate short stories from Tamil, which is my first language or mother tongue.

FOOD & TRAVEL

A Film Buff in Madurai

LION OF THE DESERT, Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar (holding child), 1981, © United Film Distribution We had reached the theater late that day. A temple procession on the main road made it impossible for our scooter to pass. Daring shortcuts brought us to the...

The Power of Language

At the pediatrician’s clinic, a nurse told Viorica Marian, who is a native speaker of Romanian, to use only English with her American-born daughter. Speaking another language would “confuse” the child and hurt her long-term, the woman had said. This was a good decade ago....

The Thousand Pillared Hall

Big grownups are all bad. ShenbagaKuzhalvaimozhi, the little girl with the long name, has come to this grand conclusion before she arrives at the Hall of Thousand Pillars. This is one place within the temple compound with hardly any people, big or little. The hall...